fi 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 








Religion and Social Science 



DELIVERED AT THE 



SECOND ANNUAL MEETING 



OF THE 



FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION, 



May 28, 1869. 






BY D. A, WAS SON. 



/8-6'f 



; 



^v 



°$* 



RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 

I HAVE been invited, and will attempt, to discuss the ques- 
tion, " Is the province of social science identical with that of 
religion ? " At the outset an embarrassment occurs. I am a 
little in doubt what social science might be. Religion is a 
sentiment inherent in human nature. Diversely explained and 
interpreted, it is always there, to be explained and interpreted 
anew, if one will. Not only a principle of man's nature, it is 
also a conspicuous feature of his history : its record is that of 
the rise and decline of empires, civilizations, systems of culture, 
systems of thought. But social science — ■ is there such a sci- 
ence ? Is it not rather a desideratum than an existing fact ? Are 
we even sure that such a science, in a strict use of the word, is 
possible ? Science assumes forces, which under the same cir- 
cumstances will always produce the same results. Of the union 
of soda and muriatic acid we know precisely what will come ; 
but the most definite of social relations — that of marriage, for 
example — produces happiness or misery, moral growth or moral 
deterioration, according to the character of the parties related. 
Can there be, save in a sense extremely loose, a science of 
marriage ? Can there be a science of falling in love, to begin 
with ? Information might be diffused, which would often be of use 
both before marriage and after. But its effect will depend upon 
personal quality. An open, clear, receptive nature, plastic to 
thought, and ever renewing itself in the image of its ideals, will 
turn it to account ; a dim, passionate nature, closely shut up, and 
governed chiefly by the fate of temperament, will do little with 
it ; a bad nature will not even desire to. make it serviceable. 

The mariner may understand very well how to beat to wind- 
ward ; but if he is to beat into harbor through swift and varying 
currents, without knowing how they run, his ability to calculate 
will be limited. Social science must always navigate in the 

Note. — Published by permission of the Executive Committee of the 
Free Religious Association from advance sheets of their forthcoming 
Annual Report. 

LC Control Number 





tmp96 027059 



Religion and Social Science. 39 

midst of these currents of individuality ; nor from any convenient 
almanac or coast pilot can learn beforehand their times, their 
force, and direction : only inspection on the spot and at the 
moment can determine these. With obvious conditions and 
constant relations such a science may deal capably ; but the 
conditions we supply, the relations we establish, can ill resist the - 
chemistry of character : touched by this incalculable solvent, 
they yield, are transformed, and re-appear in a new shape. Pov- 
erty is undesirable ; but, at the impact of a fine soul, it begins to 
shine like the morning star, and to sing as if all heaven sang 
through it. Riches are an advantage : Shylock has them ; 
Ochiltree is a Croesus in the comparison. Blindness is a calam- 
ity: but behind the seeing eyeball the poison sac of envy or hate 
may lie ; while, through that which is darkened, charity may look 
as if it were the lens of angels. 

No doubt the scientific spirit has much to tell us concerning 
the art of living helpfully together. To some extent, the knowl- 
edge so gained may be mechanized by institutions, and made 
generally effective : to a much larger extent, however, it can 
only be diffused, to be apprehended more or less clearly according 
to the various measures of intelligence, and to be used, or not 
used, or misused, according to the diversities of disposition. 

We may say, then, that social science is designed to embrace 
all that knowledge, applicable to social conduct, which may be 
put in use independently of individual character, and, together 
with this, such positive knowledge as may be submitted to the 
individual, to have an effect contingent upon his personal quality. 
This is the fairest account of it I am able to give. 

Personal quality — we are constantly brought around to that. 
Given a man, with eyes to see and a zeal to know, science will 
become his cicerone, and show him all about the place. But 
structure first ; action and acquisition afterward. It makes some 
odds in respect to flight whether or not a creature has wings : 
merely to know by what mechanic laws flight is accomplished 
does not suffice ; one may flap this knowledge all day long, and 
stick fast to the earth none the less. Structure and quality of 
being determine the value of all knowing. Just here we approach 
the function of religion. And, with a purpose to clear up this 



do TheRadical. 

^ .;';(* 

matter if possible, I shall endeavor to elucidate, first, the essen- 
tial office of religion in the nature of man, and, secondly, its 
office as a social institution. Having sought, by such exposition, 
to answer our question more effectually than it could be an- 
swered by any controversial statement, I will conclude, as I have 
begun, with a glance at social science. 

' I. What is religion ? What does it do in man's nature ? Why 
should it be there at all ? It is designed, I answer, to uplift and 
sustain man upon a spiritual ground, the ground of freedom, the 
ground of ideal truth and good. In other words, its office is to 
make him, and keep him, a human being. That is what I am to 
show. 

Conceive the situation of the animal man in the midst of the 
physical universe. What an insect, what an atomy, what an 
embodied insignificance, he appears ! Without natural clothing, 
without natural weapons, wanting the wing and eye of the falcon, 
wanting the scent, speed, and native cunning of the fox, a mere 
mouthful to some of his animal neighbors, feeble in instinct, 
delicate in digestion, more sensitive and susceptible of pain, and 
less provided by nature with ready-made supply, than any other 
creature, — he exhibits the maximum of want and the minimum 
of resource. What can he do but tug and sweat under the whip 
of his own necessities ? Lorded over by the immense system of 
the world, what sentiment can he have but that of his own little- 
ness, subjection, and insignificance ? When the thunder breaks, 
when the storm roars, when the sea rages, when the earth 
shakes, when the elements are at their huge horse-play, what is 
he ? The grass beneath his foot grows fearlessly when his knees 
are knocking together. The pines lift their proud heads to 
wrestle with the tempest when he dives for an uncertain security 
into a hole in the earth. Nature overlies him with all its weight : 
what shall lift it off, lift him above it, and enthrone him in a 
sense of the sovereign significance of his own being ? 

It is to be done by a peculiar resource within himself, — by 
somewhat, which, in allusion to its ethereal nature, I shall at 
present call the immanent dream of the human soul ; a dream 
that stands in perpetual, defiant contrast with his outward expe- 
rience, The forces of the world enslave him : he dreams pure 



Religion and Social Science. 41 

freedom, absolute and immortal. All things around him change, 
and helplessly he changes with them : he dreams a conscious 
poise and comprehension, that mutation cannot invade. Time 
sweeps past with its succession of days, and on the wings of the 
days his life flies, to disappear as they do : he dreams the con- 
scious eternal. The world affronts him with hard, material, impen- 
etrable fact ; insolently independent of him ; owing nothing, as 
appears, to any principle in his breast : he dreams the primacy 
and universality of thought, holding the solid universe in solution 
forever. In the physical world, force is the be-all and end-all : 
he dreams the conscious right, commissioned with authority to 
judge reality by ideal standards, and renew it in an ideal image. 
All that he beholds partakes of imperfection : he dreams the 
perfect, — beauty and good without flaw and without instability. 
This dream, moreover, is humanity itself, the essence of its 
nature. All the distinctive genius of man is in it : all his high 
performance comes out of it. It enters into his contemplation 
of the forms of nature and life, and makes poetry and art ; into 
his regard of nature assumed to be the embodiment of thought, 
and makes science ; into the eye, with which he reads the signifi- 
cance of his own being, considered as universal truth, and makes 
philosophy ; into his sense of relation to his fellow, and fnakes 
morality, civil and social order ; into his self-recognition, and 
makes the aspiration to liberty ; it hovers before him as an ideal, 
and makes the impulse, the guidance, and the goal of progress. 
The native dream of the soil of humanity is the stuff of all things 
worthy that are, or are done, on the earth. Take the " Iliad " for 
an example. What is the bare physical fact in that case ? Num- 
bers of excited individuals met in two opposed parties, and thrust 
sharpened stakes into each other ; and many had holes made in 
them, and died. There is that " Iliad " in a nutshell. The rest is 
Homer's dream ; or the dream of that multiple Homer, the old 
Hellenic race. But take the Homeric imagination, and all that 
belongs to it, out of that race, and what remains ? Teufels- 
droch's forked radishes in clothes! Look at Dante'? dream, so 
much more awful, so much less founded on outward fact, than 
that of Homer. But this dream is Catholic Christianity ; and 
Catholic Christianity was one parent, at least, of the fairest civili- 



42 The Radical. 

>« 
zation our earth has yet known. The " Paradise Lost," — no one 
questions but that is a dream. But the " Paradise Lost " is 
Calvinism in the noblest expression this has received, or is likely 
to receive ; and Calvinism was the soul of Anglo-Saxon civili- 
zation for two centuries. Buddhism is dream ; Brahmanism, 
Zoroastrianism, Mohammedanism, the same, as all agree ; but 
each is the animating spirit of a system, or systems, of civiliza- 
tion. Niebuhr digs beneath the walls of Rome, and finds dream 
there ; criticism inspects the Old and New Testaments, to find 
the like there. Resolve, in fine, any civilization into its formative 
principles, and it is the innate, indestructible dream of the 
human soul that you come to. This has reared the pyramids, 
built the temples, fashioned the speaking marbles ; this has 
sounded the note of epic song, blown the trump of proph- 
ecy, woven wide as earth and heaven the divine texture of 
thought ; this, too, prophesying justice, has laid the roadways of 
good customs, like the streets ,of cities, between the souls of 
men. Expunge this and its work from man and his history, and 
history and man himself vanish. j 

But some may say that we could well spare the pyramids, and 
Homer, and Dante, and the " Paradise Lost," and much more of 
a like •kind. I think otherwise ; but suppose it so. Can we, 
however, spare duty ? Every one sees that if the word " ought " 
were obliterated from the vocabulary and the thought of hu- 
manity, all civilization were dust in a day : ought is the strong 
sustaining fibre in this tissue of human institutions and human 
manners. Well, this, too, is the dream of the soul. It comes 
from the spirit- world within, — strange, utterly strange, to the 
world without. Distill the sun and moon, and there will not 
come of them so much as a dew-drop of ideal obligation. In 
the world, what is, is ; what has force, has force, — and there is 
the end of it. Man comes with that miraculous "ought" that 
word of sovereign judgment and prophecy and creative import 
in his mouth. It is audacious. Consider what a fact is. It has 
a pedigree^bld as the world, — has come to pass by the process 
of nature from the beginning. And behold a mere idea sits in 
judgment upon this fact, offering itself as the image into whose 
likeness the other, with world-old rights of conservatism to back 



Religion and Social Science. 43 

it, must consent to be fashioned anew ! But, without that auda- 
cious exaltation of the import of his own nature, man were not 
a human being. 

That dream of humanity — is it, however, mere dream? Is 
this the right name for it ? Mere subjective fantasy, the trick 
and illusion of consciousness, — is that what it really is? The 
human soul says, Freedom ; declares that freedom not only is, 
but is as the breath of life to itself. Is there, however, any free- 
dom ? The outward world asserts with one voice that it neither 
exists nor is possible. What now ? Shall we say, There is, in 
fact, no freedom, but the nature of man is so constructed as to 
make a fictitious affirmation of it ? And concerning the moral 
consciousness and its import shall we say the like ? Is there a 
cluster of falsehoods in man's breast, on which all his progress 
and all his quality as a human being depend ? One thing is cer- 
tain : had the matter been so understood from the first, the page 
of history were now a blank. It is the credit man has given to 
the import of his own spirit, that has empowered and inspired 
him. The struggle his spirit has had to maintain with the 
oppression of nature without, and the passion of nature within, 
has been hard enough even when humanity has believed un- 
doubtingly in the report made by its higher being. Suppose 
when Moses, with shining face, brought the tables of the law, an 
" enlightened " Israelite had stepped up to him, and said famil- 
iarly, " Moses, come now, my good fellow, be reasonable. You 
know this law of yours has no such universal ground and eternal 
sanction as you would have us think. It is something that you 
feel, as you might feel sleepy or wakeful. Sometimes I feel so 
myself. Rather agreeable, too, — don't you think so? Quite 
a luxury when one is in the mood. But the feeling is all there 
is of it, you know. Nothing substantial about it ! " Suppose 
that had been the view of the Israelites generally : Judea might 
as well have been Terra del Fuego, — would have been of no 
more historical importance. 

Now, just where might have arisen such a destroying doubt as 
I have indicated, religion has come in to forestall it, and to ren- 
der it for many an age impossible. Religion has come in, and 
said God, and, by so doing, made the heavens a floor for the 



44 The Radical. 

spirit of man. God is the infinite, eternal substantiality and 
ascendency of that dream of the human soul, — the substan- 
tiality of that Freedom in which the soul must live to be a soul 
at all ; of that Right which the moral consciousness declares ; 
of that Good, which the heart imagines ; of that Eternity in 
which man ascends ,above time and change ; of that Perfection 
which gives a guiding ideal to his progress ; of that Significance 
which art enshrines and thought explains. " Father in heaven," 
says the soul asserting the supreme fact, and claiming consan- 
guinity with it ; and, so saying, secures an infinite ground and 
resource of reality for that dream, — dream now no longer, — 
which is all the genius of humanity, and author of all its achieve- 
ment. 

That is not clear ? We can make it so, then. Let us select 

one principle of man's consciousness, — -his inward recognition of 

freedom as a fact, and a fact for and of his own being ; and let 

us see whether it must not have its truth, if truth it do have, in 

that which religion declares. 

Freedom is in part felt by man as a possession : still more it 
is cherished as an ideal, towards which humanity forever yearns 
and aspires. An ideal — what is that ? The ideal is that which 
is in itself a good. There are things which are good for some- 
thing, — muck and money, for example : there is also that for 
which all things are good. This is what humanity is after from age 
to age forever : this it is from which all values are derived. To 
pursue it is the vocation, to attain it the blessedness, of humanity. 
We call it the ideal ; but, if we are not here dancing in a maze of 
delusion, it should be fact, the solidest of facts, since it is that 
which all other facts are for. Freedom is recognized as such an 
ideal, in itself good. Because it is a good in itself, nothing can 
pay for the loss of it. The man who has become in soul and spirit 
a slave — slave all through — is no longer a man. He has lost his 
soul, wherefore the gain of the whole world were to him no gain : 
it is impossible to enrich a block, no matter what is attached to it. 
The gold mines in California are not rich for themselves, but 
only for man, who can connect them with his ideals, and make 
them subservient to that which is itself good. We say, then, 
that true, pure freedom is that kind of good which is absolutely 



Religion and Social Science. 45 

good ; and that the idea of freedom is one of those chemic prin- 
ciples, without which, heroism, rectitude, honor, any virtue what- 
soever, cannot exist : it is precisely this freedom which makes 
the world-wide distinction between virtue and mere force. 

Well, suppose- that universal free Spirit, comprehending and 
concluding all, is not a fact at all Suppose that man is here in 
the unsupported littleness of his animal being. Can he be in 
any sincere and valid sense free ? Free, — with the immense 
forces of the world going over his head, under his feet, all around 
him, all through him, ruling him from without and from within ! 
The truth is, the best we could say of man, so conceived of, 
would be that there is in him, as also in mud-worms, and in 
every sentient creature, a little natural force, so related to 
the forces around him, that, under favorable circumstances, it 
suffices to preserve his existence in tolerable comfort. Is that 
the ideal freedom ? Is it that with which humanity seeks ever 
with impassioned, inspired hope to crown and glorify its being ? 
Is that the shining cloud by day, and pillar of fire by night, which 
noble souls follow through life, through death, to the gates, past 
the gates, of eternity ? No : that is not the ideal freedom. And 
indeed it must be obvious to any one who will reflect a little, that 
no such liberation as should be for its own sake an object of de- 
sire is attainable by a creature wholly finite. We must look 
higher for the grand prerogative of humanity, or cease to look for 
it altogether. 

" Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man ! " 

What, then, is that which can be free, — - free, let us say, with 
respect to the immense forces of the world ? Only that which 
is above them ; only the universal mind that finds expression by 
them. Freedom is the supreme reality, or is no reality. Such 
Being as is in its nature original and ultimate ; such Being as 
penetrates and comprehends all, seeing in all the process of the 
universe but the march, in all the issues of the universe but the 
fulfillment, of its own thought, — such Being may be, and is, free. 
If such Being is fact, freedom is fact ; not otherwise, 

Such Being religion beholds and declares in a passion of love 
and awe. God is, Freedom is : the statements are true, or are 



46 The Radical* 

false together. The eye of religion sees, and its voice irresisti- 
bly affirms, that sovereign fact in which alone man's dream of 
freedom can be more than dream. 

Suppose now that a door opens from man's breast into that 
realm of free universality and supremacy, — then its freedom is for 
him ; he emerges at the summit of his being into the divine lib- 
eration of Being itself Religion declares the open door, and 
leads man through it. Thus it substantiates man's conscious- 
ness of freedom, giving him a firm ground for its support. 

And what it does once, it must do always. Mr. Phillips says 
that true faith came into the world at a particular time past ; 
that it is not so coming now ; that he finds it here, and concerns 
himself only to apply it. You have seen the rings in a pond 
made by a falling stone : they widen, and flatten out as they 
widen. Religion dependent wholly upon traditional impulse, — 
merely found here and applied, —-grows extensive and flat at the 
same time ; and on seeing the six articles of Mr. Phillips's Chris- 
tian creed, — I believe in the peace society, I believe in the 
Maine Law, I believe in the eight-hour movement, etc.,— -I could 
not help thinking, if he will pardon me for saying so, that his 
Christianity had come to a state of flatness indeed ! 

The import, then, of religion is vital, — it is life : it underlies 
everything in man and his labor that is worthy of man. His 
human consciousness, his proper human genius, lapses, dies, dis- 
appears, without it. With its dawn, dawns the true day of 
humanity ; with its lift of man to a spiritual ground, he ceases 
to dangle as a mere fringe upon the skirts of nature : spiritual 
majesty sits upon his front ; a divine security in his heart ; 
prophecy and song, edict and revelation, upon his tongue. 
Always there is in religion, as its essential office, this lift, this 
enlargement, this escape from the bonds of finite nature, this 
enthronement of man's inner consciousness above all the fate of 
the world. 

It is true that as an acrobat will hang by the toes from a pole 
or rope forty feet above the ground, so men may depend from 
the high hold of their faith in very ungainly postures, the head 
sometimes being indubitably downward. Our age is little indul- 
gent towards these infelicities of intellectual attitude, and prefers 



Religion and Social Science. 47 

that one should rather keep the due perpendicular in a post-hole, 
than that he should lean, sprawl, or dangle in the skies. Other 
times have had the opposite predilection, and felt a pleasure in 
seeing the elevation of belief maintained, as it were, by the 
merest toe-hold, by the utmost inversion of the understanding. 
Both of these are partialities : we are concerned to correct our 
own. We are concerned to know and make it known that the 
function of religion is to lift, plant, and secure man upon another 
and greater reality than that which visibly surrounds him. 

And now, for confirmation of all this, I appeal to history, — to 
its plain, indubitable, universal testimony. When and where 
has there been a civilization that had not its root in religion ? 
When and where a high civilization that had not behind it many 
ages of religious growth and refinement of religious ideas ? 
When and where any noble art, or noble philosophy, that did not 
refer itself historically to the same resource ? When and where 
has any great system of science been developed, until religion, 
by centuries upon centuries of activity, had produced that eleva- 
tion of spirit, which, even with its eye fixed upon the outward 
world, is still concerned about questions of pure truth ? No- 
where, never, have these things been seen. Science taking the 
place of religion ! It is the leaves on the tree taking the place 
of the root and supporting trunk. There is a secret in the study 
of psychology which I esteem invaluable : it is that the perpetual 
order of dependence in the powers of man's spirit is shown by the 
order of their development in history. That which was historically 
the root is the root to-day. A hundred years ago, the root of yon- 
der oak began to spread in the ground : to-day a leaf opens upon 
its boughs. It is not enough to say, " But for the quickening of 
that root a hundred years ago, this leaf would not open : " were 
not the root quick to day, the leaf would not open. That which is 
radical in man's history, is radical in his nature forever. His- 
tory is scarcely worth studying critically, save as it shows us 
what is to-day the fact in man's being, — shows what is pure 
principle, what dependent faculty, and the like. This it will show 
to him who rightly inquires of it. And, being interrogated, it 
declares that religion is that which gives man root in a spiritual 
ground, enabling him to crown his ascending life with all this 



48 The Radical. 

leafage of thought, art, science, manners, discipline, and to make 
upon himself the high requisition of rectitude and honor. > 

It is true, there are men, *vho, with little conscious religion, 
exhibit mental and moral wealth. Consider, however, what' is 
behind them, — the impulse and resource of all history. They 
trade gainfully in this accumulated capital : how was it accumu- 
lated ? what keeps it up? All material wealth comes from the 
earth ; but fortunes are made without plowing, planting, mining, 
and the like. Merchants, too, are profitable to others as well as 
to themselves, though not of the producing class. Religion, I 
have said, is the productive and sustaining principle in the mind ; 
but the merchant princes of thought and morals may roll in 
opulence, and scatter bounty on the wings of every wind, with- 
out immediate, conscious resort to this resource. But we should 
know where this capital comes from. It is said that one 
man cannot be religious for another. In an important sense 
this is true, but also in an important sense it is not true. Toil- 
ing ages, somewhat rusty-looking, may accumulate the spiritual 
capital, in which other ages will traffic splendidly, and perhaps 
with some contempt for the processes which produced it. But 
materially and spiritually these epochs of purely commercial 
splendor are ominous. Spain, in the height of her glory, neg- 
lected agriculture, and shone in the gold of the New World. 
Suddenly her prosperity fell with a crash : that was the material 
break-down that is likely to occur in such cases. Rome in her 
glory imported thought and knowledge from half the world, and 
was very shining indeed ; but this was only commerce, spiritual 
production having nearly ceased : suddenly the floors fell, and 
all her towering pride went down. It is very apt to be the case 
with old civilizations. One after another they reach this point, 
and break down. Our age, I think, is becoming spiritually com- 
mercial — progressive on the surface, and unproductive at the 
centre — in a dangerous degree. Science begins to despise that 
which can alone sustain the scientific spirit ; even reformers 
sneer at any attempt to strike to the sources of life and growth 
as " mere speculation ; " and he who suggests a warning may 
expect to be cried down as a " croaker." 

Religion gives man root in a spiritual ground ; therefore it is 



Religion and Social Science. 49 

not the same with social science or with any science. Science 
is but knowledge : religion is energy, life, supporting principle. 
Science cannot function, it can only explain : religion is strictly, 
vitally functional, — it acts, and often quite as well, when it is not 
explained. Science can be learned from books : religion exists 
only as a perpetual inspiration. Science is a product and part 
of civilization : religion is its base and sustenance. 

II. Having now ascertained what religion essentially is, let us 
pass to consider it as instituted. Institutions are the estates of 
civilization. As, on the surface of the primitive earth, lichens 
fastened upon the rock, to prepare a place for mosses, and these 
for larger growths, until at last a soil was formed, in which pines 
and oaks could take root, so the primitive thoughts and senti- 
ments of mankind have made this deposit of institutions, deep- 
ening the soil, until art, thought, science, manners, could be sus- 
tained as permanent growths. Like other estates, institutions 
require tilth, with ditching and draining, and many a kind of 
rude labor, and also with a frequent occasion to wash the hands. 
Again, like old farms ill-cultivated, institutions wear out, and 
can be brought to only by bold systems of renovation. Similar 
calamities occur in these analogous cases. The sudden decay 
of kingship and Catholicism in the age of Louis XV. was a 
potato rot of a higher degree. The effect was similar, — the 
attempt of a nation to emigrate en masse to other spiritual terri- 
tories. In general, however, men are conservative in the man- 
agment of all their estates. I remember to have heard, when 
cast-iron plows were first proposed, two old farmers having a 
right good time of it in making fun of the new invention. How 
they laughed at the giddy pates who would be taken in ! How 
they wagged their old heads, and smiled superior ! " Cast-iron 
plows ! " exclaimed one : " I would as soon think of plowing 
with an egg-shell ! " They, for their part, would stick to the old 
wooden instrument. And so in State and Church there are 
those who will trust nothing but the old wooden instrument. 
Rational religion meets with the same sort of resistance often 
opposed to " theoretical farming." In like manner, it supplies 
failures in abundance for the opposition to crow over. And 
7 



50 The Radical. 

again, in like manner, it sometimes forces upon one the question, 
whether, after all, it is not better to be wooden than wild. 

In the maturest of existing civilizations, we meet with two 
supreme institutions, — originally united in one, — State and 
Church. Let us distinguish their functions, and find the neces- 
sity of each. 

The State is designed to fix the necessary outward conditions 
of civilized life. Conditions are its care, — character being con- 
sidered only as affecting conditions. A miser buys a house, gets 
his deed duly phrased, signed, sealed, and recorded, makes his 
payments according to agreement: the State is satisfied, and 
secures him in possession, — as it should do : that he is a miser, 
and his soul a mere dark closet, is to it matter of indifference. 
A philanthropist buys a house, and, by the costs of charity, is 
prevented from making payments precisely according to stipula- 
tion : at the demand of his creditor, — who, it happens, is the 
miser just mentioned, — the State turns him out; that he is a 
philanthropist, does not weigh. Judas with the bag, and Jesus 
without it, — in the balances of the State, Judas is the "solid 
man." It does what the State should do. Property a necessary 
condition of civilization, can be secured only by assuming that 
money is the measure of value, and legal forms the measure of 
right. Such is the inevitable partiality of institutions merely 
civil. Man is here appended to his conditions, and his worth 
estimated by the measure they supply. Let the State perform 
its function. Seek not to thrust others upon it : only confusion 
would result. 

But mankind cannot stop short here : that were an arrest of 
development. The sense of an absolute worth, immortal, ineffa- 
ble, crown and glory of the universe, yet open to man, — a worth 
independent of all conditions and of all economic use, — this 
sense is present as an emotion in the first men : it grows and 
gains precision with the ages, and makes the growth of human- 
ity in doing so. This high recognition must also have its out- 
ward shape and organization. Man must so bear witness 
to himself that he believes in his own soul and its import. 
A maker by nature, he shapes himself in giving outward shape 
to his conceptions ; and any repression of this tendency bears 



Religion and Social Science. 51 

down upon his brain like the board fixed by the Flatheads 
upon the foreheads of their children. Every perennial, moving 
recognition of humanity will come, must come, to its public ex- 
pression and embodiment. 

Accordingly, humanity sooner or later feels itself under bonds 
to institute a public service to character, -— to character consid- 
ered only in itself, esteemed only for its own sake* That insti- 
tution is a church, and its distinct formation marks the greatest 
of epochs in history, signifying that man has at last come to 
himself and begun to round himself in the sphere of his dis- 
tinctive human consciousness. Here, by custom and public 
acknowledgment, the human spirit is poised upon its own axis, 
— centred upon itself in the unity and eternity of its import, 
God. Character, absolute worth, — bells ring in its celebration ; 
choirs chant, and solemn voices recite its sovereign claim ; days 
and revenues are consecrated to its service. That often this is 
coarsely and cheaply done, is undeniable : but so is farming ; 
so is anything which men generally undertake. 

I have mentioned a supreme kind of good, which is in and of 
itself a good. Money is valuable, but has in itself no worth. 
Food is valuable relatively to our desire to exist ; but one may 
eat and grow fat, and be a villain, — be worthless. But noble- 
ness, honor, rectitude, have worth, though they feed no man, and 
starve the possessor. Ideal good is absolutely good. This it 
was, that, in phrases which have suffered by tongue-wear, was 
once called the pearl of great price, the good part that cannot be 
taken away, the treasure that moth and rust do not corrupt. 
The ideal good — nothing is good without it : without it, man is 
a child of the dust, and brother of the worm. And yet how 
easily we lose sight of it ! Hunger is so exacting ! There does 
at times seem to be such a world of virtue in a beef-steak ! 
Conditions may be so comfortable or so uncomfortable ! And 
thus there is always a suck, like that of a whirlpool, to draw 
humanity down, and swamp it in the mere care of conditions 
and circumstances. To be " in good circumstances," to be " well 
off" — a long way off it may happen to be from the fulfillment 
of man's destiny as a human soul, — is a desideratum so inces- 
santly and feelingly pressed upon us, that it always tends to 



52 The Radical. 

absorb desire. And, if generous and sympathetic, we easily 
learn to sympathize with those wants which all men feel, rather 
than with those which so many have never yet become sensible of. 

And thus even philanthropy may get to be like water that will 
only run down hill ; may come to have a disastrous tendency 
towards the pots and kettles ; may boast, perhaps, of its' indiffer- 
ence to all that does not find its true end in the pot-luck of 
mankind ; may sneer, perhaps, at those who persist, persist to 
concern themselves about " the light that never was on sea nor 
shore." Philanthropy also may lie prone, and preach downwards ; 
and of this style of philanthropy the mischief is greater than 
that of mere worldliness can be, for of the moral sentiment 
itself it makes leaden weights to pull down the lids over the 
sovereign eye of the race. 

Jeremy Taylor, responsive to the divine meaning of the world, 
and singing, like his own lark, at heaven's gate, were indeed less 
useful, in the low sense of the word, than some navvy upon the 
railway, with face just a little more expressive than the clods he 
shovels. But he beholds the ideal good, without which nothing is 
good : it shines for him, it shines from him. Do not, I pray you, 
— in the interest of the world's sanity, do not, — join Mr. Phillips 
in pronouncing him less Christian than Voltaire. Voltaire was, 
when he chose, a first-class dragon-fly, to devour pernicious in- 
sects. I like his four-winged buzz and rush well enough ; but 
do not like it better than the note of the wood-thrush and light 
of the morning star. " Dragon-fly " Christianity, that really does 
devour pernicious insects, is better, to be sure, than the cream- 
ing hypocritical stagnation which only breeds those pests ; but 
even that is not quite the true angel of the Lord, bearing the 
true message from heaven. 

Not a man of universal mind, Taylor concerned himself little 
about rights in the modern sense. So far, he was partial ; but, 
on the other hand, an exclusive attention to possessory rights is 
one of the narrowest partialities ever known. Possessory rights 
alone, what Grotius, with more precision, calls "jural claims," — 
simply a wide extension of the notion of property, — would not 
suffice to build up humanity knee-high. Epictetus, a slave, enjoys 
few rights ; and thrones blush in his presence. The American 



Religion and Social Science. 53 

prize-fighter enjoys rights in plenty ; and humanity blushes for 
him. Show me a luminous soul, shining with the light of ideal 
truth known and loved, and I begin to see what the world was 
made for. Show me a world of men simply intent on extending 
claims, and so reducing the spirit of history to a mere spirit of 
litigation, and I begin to wonder why the world was made. In- 
sight, appreciation, honor, the lifted heart of adoration, the heart 
made deep with divine awe, — such a spirit as neither can a 
throne exalt nor a fetter degrade, — such a spirit respects worth, 
and is worthy. And, when the pure tone of that regard dies out 
of history, only the clack of iron pots remains ; and the dull thud 
and rasp of materialistic reform, knocking the rust off its kettles, 
and trying^ to brighten them up, were but a variation upon that 
unmeaning noise. 

Instituted religion establishes, therefore, a worship, wort/iship, 
recognition, affirmation, of pure spiritual worth. By prayer, the 
soul's gesture of infinite desire, by the measured ecstacy of song, 
by the poetic suggestion of symbols and observances, by the 
piercing note of prophecy, it keeps up, as it can, that grand 
acknowledgment. The mode of expression may change, and I 
insist on none in particular ; but its work is always the same, — 
to make the human spirit rest in that worth, which only to spirit 
belongs or is possible. 

Has the Christian Church done this ? After a fashion, — not 
as I hope it will be done one day. But we must own that even 
its bigotry has implicated this function. All that writing of 
creeds, insisting upon creeds, punishing supposed defect of cre- 
dence, — what does it signify but that thought and belief had 
become objects of regard ? The savage does not persecute 
thought, because he does not care for it. " Mere speculation " — 
what is that to him ? A step ahead : he begins to feel man's 
obligations to pure truth. Now he arrives at the virtue of big- 
otry, — really a virtue relatively to his preceding indifference. 
Another step : he asserts the rightful freedom of thought. A 
noble assertion, if made in the interests of thought. But now 
some fall over on the other side, join the savage in his contempt 
for " mere speculation," and reconvert that liberality into another 
form of barbarism. The Christian Church has done better than 
that y at any rate. 



54 The Radical 

A notion has got abroad in our day, that instituted religion is 
properly a kind of voluntary waiter upon the State, to patch and 
amend the civil order, to eke out the defects of the civil life, to 
curry opinion for the tanners of the caucus, to do moral lobbying 
in the legislature, and to make itself generally useful towards the 
bettering of conditions. Of late, indeed, an illustrious orator, 
the most eloquent voice among thirty-five million men, -—his 
opinions, whatever their stuff within (and I sometimes think 
them cheap), always coming arrayed in cloth of gold, while 
his personal magnanimity is remarkable, — this prince of the 
platform has come forward to say that Christianity is dis- 
tinctively such a kind of religion as is concerned exclusively 
about civil and political ameliorations. But is not this intended 
for irony ? The obvious fact is, that no great system of religion 
is known among men, which, judged by its primitive records, has, 
so little as Christianity, proposed any arrangement of the social 
mechanism as its end. What are we to think when Christianity 
is especially exalted as a Maine-Law religion ? The Maine Law 
was in the Koran twelve centuries before it was on the statute- 
books of a Christian State. On the other hand, Jesus was stig- 
matized as a wine-bibber ; according to one account, he worked 
a miracle to furnish wine at a wedding after the guests had 
already well drunken ; while, following his example, and obeying 
his request, his disciples met after his death to drink wine in his 
remembrance. 

Christianity set itself to emphasize the ideal good ; to turn 
the eye of man, to lift the heart of man, to kindle the desire of 
man, towards it. That distinctive purpose caused Jesus to say, 
" My kingdom is not of this world," — not a Maine Law ; not a 
moralized legalism ; not virtue made by the divine apostleship of 
the policeman, with a billy for a sword of the Spirit ; not a mesh 
of civil measures ; but the ideal life centred upon itself, supreme 
in its own right, seeing by its own light, feeding upon its own 
aliment, eternal truth and good. And he who feels, in his 
heart of hearts, that the divine meaning of the world has claims 
upon him, being put forth for his recognition and appreciation, 
and who, therefore, lives chiefly the life of a seeing and con- . 
fessing intelligence, — that man, live he at Concord or else- 



Religion and Social Science. 55 

where, is many times nearer the spirit and purpose of the 
Galilean saint than he who pooh-poohs all this as mere specula- 
tive dreaming. 

Religion is indeed interested to ameliorate conditions, — first, 
because light within will not endure darkness without ; secondly, 
because conditions re-act upon character. But there is a high 
road of reformation, and there is a way that lies as through 
thickets of thorny cactus. Elevate and clarify the conscious- 
ness of humanity, widen its inward horizon, clear its skies, qualify 
it to turn quickly to the poles of truth ; and all needful modifica- 
tion of outward condition comes almost of itself* Persuade men, 
on the contrary, that the desire and quest of pure truth are a mere 
staring into the vacant air ; that thought and sentiment are in 
themselves worthless ; that ideas, like ordure, are good only to 
spread on the ground, and increase the crop ; that a religion in- 
habiting the expanse of eternity is vain, while a religion shut up 
to the hour, and serving only to intensify the interest in special 
measures, is alone good, — and reformation comes hard, costs 
much, and is worth little. For the incidental result is a harsh, 
limited, contentious spirit, so shut up to particulars that between 
those who differ there is no common ground. Even the better 
mind of a community wholly moved in that way would be 
represented by a narrow and nipping moralism, a spirit as of 
reformed snapping-tiirties. Each class and clique will have 
its particular nip ; and each will see nothing but that which it 
has fastened upon. Then the tussle would be to discover who 
could nip hardest, and hold on longest. The moral nip is effec- 
tive, and is likely to have the best of it ; but, at its best, such a 
life would be much like that of a toe in a tight boot ! 

* A year ago Mr. Phillips, while depicting in a speech the future of reform, 
was interrupted with the question how he proposed to accomplish what he 
anticipated. He "brought down the house" by answering promptly, "In 
the same way that Christianity climbed the throne of the Caesars." But 
Christianity did not climb, it descended, to the throne of the Caesars. It 
began with a purpose and hope utterly, one might say infinitely, transcend- 
ing all mere legal benefit and civil welfare ; upon the " handwriting of ordi- 
nances " it resolutely turned the back, looking with fascinated eye to the 
ideal, eternal good ; and when this supreme good had become its crown, and 
made it glorious, then it stooped to take up that crown of empire which the 
Roman world laid at its feet. 



56 The Radical. 

III. Finally and briefly : religion, while faithful to its function 
of affording a substantial ground and an encouraging counte- 
nance to the high spiritualities of the human race, is, and must 
be, concerned about labor and wages, commerce and capital, 
health and houses, civil rights and laws, and the like. It will be 
asked to give or withhold its sanction in such matters, and it will 
owe an answer. .Now, in order to give an answer, which shall at 
once be good in spirit and sane in judgment, it must know, not 
only the sovereign claim of the soul, but the law of outward 
things. Here science is its proper eye. The spiritual conscious- 
ness knows by its own light what are rectitude and honor, holi- 
ness and heroism, adoration, charity, noble awe, the spirit of faith- 
fulness, the spirit of truth : it does not know by its own light 
whether or not wine is wholesome, usury beneficial, eight hours 
of labor better than ten ; and, in the attempt to pronounce 
out of hand upon these matters and the like, it has made 
sad mistakes. Whenever and wherever it has to decide upon 
outward conditions, and therefore to take the law of things into 
account, it is dependent for the sanity of its judgment upon 
other resources than those which are native to it. Here it must 
supplement its own methods by those of scientific investigation. 
Science, and science alone, as I think, can teach it to be practical 
with entire sanity. This, too, is the proper corrective of pas- 
sionate reform, — which surely needs a corrective : surely it is 
time that for the methods of agitation were substituted the 
methods of growth ; and for the harangue, study and the sober 
conference of prepared minds. Sober, modest, temperate, capa- 
ble of a wise silence, able to wait and seek, able to distinguish 
between partial and perfect knowledge, speaking when it does 
speak in the modulated tones of calm knowledge and clear intel- 
lectual conviction, science is not one of those dangerous allies 
which are liable at any moment to annul their services by ex- 
cesses. Like religion, it subdues passion, and respects truth. 
A substitute for religion it can no more be than vegetable phys- 
iology can be a substitute for sunshine : the natural ally of reli- 
gion, its eye for truth of the outward world, science should be. 
Well, therefore, may modern religion stand in the door to reach 
forth a cordial hand, and say to social science, " Welcome, 
younger brother, to an honored place in the household of faith." 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16056 
(724) 779-21 1 1 



